Events

Sunday, July 14 2013

Glen Hansen specializes in art inspired by the architecture of cities like Paris, Prague, and Venice. Now he turns his pencils and brushes on Kansas City for a show featuring over 30 drawings and a half-dozen paintings of local buildings and their architectural and decorative details.

Hixon transformed the field of portrait photography in Kansas City and the surrounding region during a career that spanned more than seven decades. His studios—the first in the Brady Building at 11th and Main Streets, and the second just one block west in the Baltimore Hotel—welcomed thousands of patrons throughout the 1910s and 1920s.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Kansas City was a heavily segregated town. African-Americans were limited even in which city facilities they could use. For instance, black citizens were permitted to have picnics at just one spot in the city’s parks system: at Shelter No. 5 in Swope Park, widely known as “Watermelon Hill.”

Local historian Joelouis Mattox discusses this era in the city’s racial past.